Convergences of the railway?s historical process and management of railway heritage (Brazil and Argentina)

ROMERO DE OLIVIEIRA, EDUARDO ; FERRARI, MÓNICA ROSSANA

Lille

Congreso; XVIth International TICCIH Congress 2015. Industrial Heritage in the Twenty-First Century, New Challenges; 2015

TICCIH (The International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage)

The Industrial Heritage Studies have had in the recent decades a considerable interest inSouth American countries. The joint academic research conducted among neighbouringcountries have become a new challenge, not only by the promoting of research programsbut also by interest in finding ways to management of railway's cultural landscape from asystemic view. Within this framework it is developing a comparative study on railwayheritage between Brazil (UNESP) and Argentina (UNT-CONICET), where we seeconvergences processes.The impact produced by the railway system has no similarity during the history of thesecountries, not after not before. In fact, these territories have the most extensive networkof Latin America, near 34.059 km (Argentina) and 30.129 km (Brazil) includingundergrounds, urban trains and others. Since the beginning of the installation of therailways to the closing down of a great part of the network, we could observeconvergences of the railway?s historical process. We believe that from a shared vision canbe understood the processes of birth, growth and partial deactivation of the railroad, aswell as identify the most appropriate tools for a comprehensive management processbecause of the infrastructure that currently has no rail operation. By this way, it will tendto conserve, as an ultimate aim, a valuable heritage that was the germ of thedevelopment of vast territories.Considering the hypothesis that there was a shared history between Brazil and Argentinaabout difficulties relating to railway heritage, the general problem arises from thequestion: what is the relationship between the railway processes installation of bothcountries, during the 19th century and the early 20th century? On the other hand, we ask:what are the problems related to the management of the heritage, particularly in themesof protection, that has architectural historic value and that are representative of thatperiod? The studies will focus particularly in the State of São Paulo and ArgentineNorthwest region whose railway extensions had about 4,000 km (1907) and 4,000 km(1914), respectively, as paradigmatic cases for this comparison.In this opportunity, the aims of this work are to make a comparative historical analysis ofthe English intervention on railways infrastructures and a brief summary of the heritageprotection. Methodologically, this work is bases on complex historical processes in whichwe intend to obtain as results: common features, reciprocal influences, similarities anddifferences in development.